6 papers
An Analytic Model for Stellar Metallicity Gradient Residuals in Cold, Phase-Mixed Galactic Disks
Shaunak Modak, Zoe Hackshaw, Keith Hawkins
The distribution of stellar metallicities over phase space in galactic disks is sculpted by both star formation and secular orbital transport processes. As a result, chemo-dynamica…
Interstellar Medium-Driven Orbital Transport -- I. Radial Heating and Migration
Shaunak Modak, Chris Hamilton, Eve C. Ostriker +1
Interstellar medium (ISM) structures gravitationally perturb stellar orbits in galactic disks, driving orbital heating and migration. However, studies of these transport processes…
Characterizing Density and Gravitational Potential Fluctuations of the Interstellar Medium
Shaunak Modak, Eve C. Ostriker, Chris Hamilton +1
Substructure in the interstellar medium (ISM) is crucial for establishing the correlation between star formation and feedback and has the capacity to significantly perturb stellar…
Galactokinetics
Chris Hamilton, Shaunak Modak, Scott Tremaine
Galactic disks lie at the heart of many of the most pressing astrophysical puzzles. There are sophisticated kinetic theories that describe some aspects of galaxy disk dynamics, but…
Galactokinetics II: Spiral structure
Chris Hamilton, Shaunak Modak, Scott Tremaine
We present a unified theory of linear spiral structure in stellar disks. We begin by identifying the characteristic scales involved in the spiral structure problem and listing some…
Why is the Galactic disk so cool?
Chris Hamilton, Shaunak Modak, Scott Tremaine
The bulk of old stars in the Galactic disk have migrated radially by up to several kpc in their lifetimes, yet the disk has remained relatively cool, i.e., the ratio of radial heat…